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McGill grad Ken Dryden trades pucks for politics
May 18, 04 Ice Hockey (M)

By Wayne Scanlan, CanWest News

Dryden trades pucks for politics
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Erudite Maple Leafs executive and former Canadiens goaltending great brings eloquence and intelligence to public service as a Liberal candidate in looming federal election
 
By Wayne Scanlan
The Ottawa Citizen
(CanWest News Service; CP contributed to this report)


Ken Dryden announced yesterday that he is leaving Leaf Nation to join the nation's Liberal party.

The political arena seems a natural step for hockey's pre-eminent intellectual, a man who has always had potential beyond the game about which he wrote and spoke so intelligently.

The vice-chairman of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, said for a variety of reasons "it is time" to leave the organization that owns the NHL's Toronto Maple Leafs to try to score the Toronto riding of York Centre in the federal election, expected to be called within days.

"How do I feel now, after all these years, finally being a candidate?"

Dryden, 56, asked at centre ice of the Air Canada Centre, home of the Leafs, where a blue and white Maple Leaf flag was suspended behind him. "Like I did when I went from kindergarten to Grade 1 ... excited, scared, nervous."

Now, if Dryden can just work on shrinking those sound bites of his. Otherwise, he'll find his windy sentences cut off by broadcast reporters in need of a meaningful 10-second spot from Parliament Hill.

Dryden, 56, was a hockey misfit, an iconoclast, in many ways. And for that he often caught grief inside the game, but gained the respect of free thinkers everywhere.

During the 1960s, it was every Canadian boy's dream to play for the Montreal Canadiens or Toronto Maple Leafs. Dryden shared that dream, but it wasn't enough. Hockey might have been his calling, but academia was a higher calling. When few hockey players imagined, or wanted to imagine, combining hockey and school, Dryden went to Cornell University and graduated in 1969 with a degree in history.

The Boston Bruins had drafted him 14th overall in 1964, but when Dryden told them he planned to attend university instead of turning pro, Boston traded his rights to Montreal that summer.

He finally joined the Canadiens in 1971 as a 23-year-old rookie, ancient by the day's standards, and immediately backed the Habs to a Stanley Cup. Incredibly, Dryden won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoff MVP with only six games of regular-season experience. That left him eligible for the Calder Trophy the next season, which he won handily.

On the streets of Canada, children playing road hockey imitated his signature posture, the tree-tall goaltender leaning on his stick during stoppages in play.

Just when everything seemed in place for a Hall of Fame career in Montreal, Dryden sat out the entire 1973-74 season, to the sight of shaking heads across the country.

Dryden was approaching his peak. He'd won a Vezina Trophy and helped lead Canada past Russia in the dramatic Hockey Summit of 1972. Despite his bargaining power, most players in Dryden's position would have simply accepted what the Canadiens were giving him. Dryden bolted training camp, while general manager Sam Pollock fumed.

As The Gazette's Red Fisher wrote in his book Hockey, Heroes and Me: "Dryden was different. This was one goaltender who danced to his own tune."

Not that Dryden wasted his time on sabbatical. He'd been juggling law school at McGill with his hockey career, so he used his season off to article for a law firm.

Though he returned the next season to resume his brilliant career, it lasted only a few years longer. He retired in 1979 before his 32nd birthday, far earlier than most others would have contemplated. Dryden was never afraid to take a different path.

He has since authored four best-selling books, including The Game, which many believe to be the finest written about hockey. His interest in education led Dryden to spend a year observing school classes for a book on the subject.

Finding his place in "the game" proved to be tougher than writing about it. Having grown up playing minor hockey and baseball in Toronto, Dryden had a vision of assuming control of the Leafs and restoring the organization to its long past glory.

Didn't happen. After joining the Leafs as president in 1997, Dryden later added the general manager's duties to his portfolio, only to be squeezed out in a corporate shuffle at Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment. He also failed in his bid to hire Bob Gainey, his ex-Canadiens teammate, as Leafs general manager.

Sitting outside the loop, as vice-chairman of MLSE, Dryden was ripe to seek greater challenges.

One can almost hear the sound of applause at his departure, not so much from MLSE, where his influence was minimal, but from the caretakers of the game, where Dryden's influence was largely rejected.

The usual tack in the NHL is to reject new ideas as treason and to bristle at all criticism as unpatriotic assault.

Dryden had a passion for cleaning up violence in hockey. At each opportunity, he spoke of his cause, wrote of the cause.

In a sense, Dryden could not have enjoyed better timing. This was a particularly brutal year in hockey marred by, among other offences, the Todd Bertuzzi incident in the NHL and a stick-swinging episode in the AHL that resulted in a one-year suspension of Canadiens' top prospect Alexander Perezhogin.

It's a time when Dryden's voice ought to have been heard, but beyond a growing number of fans and media that were listening, the holders of the game have long since dismissed him as an academic flake.

Years ago, Dryden said hockey would not be accepted as a mainstream sport in the U.S. so long as the image lingered of hockey players missing their front teeth. It was an interesting statement because it challenged something Canadians had simply accepted as a link - Stanley Cups and gap-toothed grins.

Outside of the same old core, hockey remains on the U.S. fringe today. Here we are stuck with afternoon playoff dates in a silly kowtow to American networks that aren't exactly beating down the NHL's door.

Dryden has always questioned hockey's accepted truths with a tourist's curiosity. The reaction from the hockey establishment will be a sigh of relief at his departure.

Dryden's cause, though, is not dead. It will have subsequent champions who are not so readily dismissed. And in the long run, Dryden might not seem so flaky, after all.

-- The Ottawa Citizen

Online Extra: Gazette sports writer Dave Stubbs sat down with Ken Dryden in February 2003 and put 20 questions to the most erudite goalie who ever played the game. You can read that sometimes hilarious interview on our revamped Web site www.montrealgazette.com.

© The Gazette (Montreal) 2004

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PHOTO CAPTION: Former Canadiens goaltender Ken Dryden (shown here during a 1979 game), will attempt to win the Toronto riding of York Centre.
PHOTO CREDIT: CP


PHOTO CAPTION: Ken Dryden says he is "excited, scared, nervous" about leaving the Maple Leafs to run as a Liberal in the next federal election.
PHOTO CREDIT: ADRIAN WYLD, CP

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